Cox’s Bazar the longest beach in the world

15.09.2020

Cox’s Bazar is the pride and joy of Bangladeshis. Everywhere I went people would always say to visit their famous beach. I had already planned my Bangladesh trip to end at Cox’s Bazar, and after being in the big cities I was looking forward to filling my lungs with sea air for a few days.

Even before I knew anything about Cox’s Bazar I was intrigued to visit. It seemed, bizarre that a place in Bangladesh would still have a colonial-era name, of a person no less.

Cox’s Bazar is the name of the city, the surrounding district, and the name of what is the longest unbroken length of beach in the world. I’ve read it’s between 120 to 155km. Whatever its length, it’s a big-ass beach.

Even before I knew anything about Cox’s Bazar I was intrigued to visit. It seemed,

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Welcome to Cox's Bazar

At the top end of the beach is the city of Cox’s Bazar, which is where the airport and most of the hotels are. The first thing I did after I had checked in was to get a glimpse of this legendary beach. It’s a wide and sandy beach in front of the hotel area. The water colour is more of a “Bay of Bengal Brown”, as I liked to call it.

Bay of Bengal Watch

When I was booking a hotel I was having a hard time finding any decent rooms. It turns out I was there during a national holiday, so the beach was even more crowded than usual. At times the beach resembled a waddle of penguins. I imagined that if an alien spaceship came to earth they might come here to study our species, just as we head to Antarctica to study Emperor Penguins.

Holiday crowd

It seemed like half of Bangladesh was here, and like my experience in Chittagong I was swamped with selfie requests.

Beach crowd

When I go to the beach I usually spend my time walking along the waters edge, which is what most people were doing here. It seems like I have found my beach people.

Flip-flop Shore

The good thing about Cox’s Bazar is that most of the development is centred on one area. You only have to walk a kilometre and the crowd thins out fast. By then you end up in beach cricket territory.

Beach cricket

And beyond there it thins out to the point where you have the beach to yourself. I had considered renting a bike and going out to explore more of the coastline, but I was perfectly content with just walking a few kilometres away from the hotel zone. Part of me wanted to see every kilometre of this beach, as if to confirm that it is indeed the longest beach in the world. Then I realised that as long as I get a bit of solitude on this stretch of beach I don’t need to see it all.

Empty beach

Most of the activity beyond the hotels are fishermen. Look out for these charming little fishing boats.

Fishing boat

Cox’s Bazar is near the Myanmar border, though crossing has been closed for foreigners for years. One thing that was disturbing about being here was knowing that not far from here are refugee camps, where life is not a day at the beach. Over half a million Rohingya refugees have poured in from neighbouring Myanmar into Cox’s Bazar District.

Burmese Market

As with Dhaka and Chittagong, there are very few signs of the globalised world in Cox’s Bazar. On the main beach road a KFC stands alone as the only internationally recognisable brand.

KFC Cox's Bazar

Why eat at KFC though when you can get a curry with a freshly-made paratha bread.

Paratha

At this point of my trip I was hoping to find some more cafes. I found one cafe that served espresso coffee and was suitable to do some work in.

Cafe 14

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Another good cafe is Mermaid cafe, which is a popular expat cafe by the beach. I saw more foreigners at these two cafes than in all of a week of travel in Bangladesh. My guess that most of the foreigners were working here, perhaps involved in the nearby refugee camps. I also saw the same three British guys walking along the beach at sunset every night.

Mermaid cafe

Apart from the foreigners in their NGO 4WD’s there are very few international visitors here. The only flights here are from Dhaka and Chittagong and there is no indication of an international tourist market. While wandering around I soon realised there were no international currency exchanges. Usually beach resorts are awash with currency exchanges. With 163 million in the country, the domestic market is certainly large enough to sustain a tourism industry here.

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There appears to have been a building boom several years ago which then came to a halt.

Unfinished building

The most prominent building is the Radisson Blu project which is currently a concrete shell.

Abandoned Radisson project

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There is concern about over development, which the abandoned constructions sites stand as a monument to. On the other hand I would actually prefer it if they just developed the crap out of the city, and then left the rest of the beach as is. This would be better than having the 100+ kilometres- don't forget to tell me how the story went ??